June 27, 2008

This is not peculiar to HCN. Across the West this sort of story has become commonplace. CRMPs, CRMs, partnerships, collaborations, stakeholder agreements, challenges, peace – the terms used to describe these comings together have changed; but instances of the phenomenon have been on the increase for 20 years now and HCN has been there all the way – cheerleading!

I’ve had my own experiences with the phenomenon. As a forest activist living in Siskiyou County, California I was public enemy #1 until Bill Clinton was elected. But then I and other local “enviros” were invited to join with the timber industry and local elected officials to forge “peace”. Problem was the peace the timber industry had in mind involved me going along with continued clearcutting of the national forests in exchange for them telling the community I was now no longer the enemy but a good guy. Some of the “enviros” in the room found this offer irresistible. I and most of my allies walked away. We quickly regained “enemy of the people” status.

Later I helped found a collaborative in my local watershed that brought together salmon advocates, farmers, ranchers and agency folks to work on salmon restoration. Things went fine until it became clear that I was going to insist that the collaborative address the progressive dewatering of the river. I was then engineered out of the group.

But I have also seen some of these collaboratives work. And so over the years I have sought to understand what makes some collaborative efforts “successful” and others “failures”.

If you are interested in the results of my 20-year study of “stakeholder collaboratives” send me an e-mail via HCN and I’ll send you what I’ve written on the subject and a reading list. Here, however, I want to focus on how the media in general and HCN in particular report on these phenomena.

I think it is fair to say that for HCN and most western and national media outlets it is the coming together of adversaries that is of interest – not the specifics of the deal which is forged. Rarely do we find an article or broadcast report that actually examines the specifics of the deal that has been worked out.

Jenkins was selective in who he interviewed. He ignored, for example, the Indian Tribe that was in the negotiations but decided not to endorse the resulting Agreement. So we are led to believe that the only folks not buying in are two regional environmental groups.

It is almost as if Matt Jenkins wanted the story to fit an ideal template – Indians and farmers coming together and enviros on the outside - and that he (unconsciously I have to believe) ignored data that did not fit that template.

While the human interest appeal of situations like those which have emerged on the Klamath River can not be denied, I believe such efforts ought to be judged on what they produce – the actual project, agreement, plan, proposal or legislation – and not on whether folks from different perspectives have discovered common ground. After all, those individuals are going to move on –either professionally or via the grim reaper – while the agreements, arrangements and legislation they produce – and the impacts on the ground – will likely be around for a much longer time. And that’s why - when reporting on such things - I think HCN should pay more attention to the products and not nearly as much to the personalities.